Movie Mondays: Toy Story

Pixar are one of my favourite film studios. While a lot of that is down to them being responsible for a good chunk of my childhood, it’s also due to how good they’re films are. While in most recent years their output has become rather mixed, when Pixar are on their game, they make some of the best animated films out there, hell they make some of the best films period animated or otherwise. And after watching Soul, which is a brilliant film by the way, I felt like reacquainting my love of the company by going through their entire back catalogue.

But we have to start somewhere and that somewhere is Toy Story, the very first movie to be entirely done in CGI. What Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is to traditional animation, Toy Story is to 3D computer animation. It was a revolutionary. We had seen CG animation before, the CG television series ReBoot debuted just a year previously, but never on this scale. Granted I was a bit too young to appreciate it at the time given I was only a wee baby, but that didn’t stop me from watching and loving the film. I’m pretty sure most kids that grew up in the nineties did. It's considered a classic, but it might not have ended up that way.

The development of Toy Story was rough. Pixar was originally founded on the idea of creating the first fully CG film in the mid-eighties over at LucasFilm. When Pixar realized that Lucas might eventually sell them off, this was around the release of Return of the Jedi and the resultant decline of the Star Wars brand, they decided to split from the company and go independent in 1983 thanks to a hefty donation by one Steve Jobs. Under Jobs leadership Pixar became a hardware company that dealt with developing tools for helping with computer animation.

Probably the biggest success in this regard was their development of the digital ink and colouring program, CAPS, which was co-developed by Pixar and the Walt Disney company. Pixar did have an animation department headed by former Disney animator and inappropriate hug enthusiast, John Lassiter, but it was mostly focused on developing shorts that acted as tech demos for the company's hardware. The shorts were well received and one of them, Tin Toy, won an Oscar for Best Short Subject. This proved useful when the hardware department went pear shaped and was eventually shut down, leaving Pixar solely as an animation studio.

By 1991 Pixar was on the verge of bankruptcy. The only thing keeping it afloat was Steve Jobs pumping loads of his own money into the company. So when Disney came to strike up a deal with Pixar to help make their dream of making the first CG animated movie a reality, Pixar wasn’t in a position to say no. So a deal was struck between Pixar and head of Disney animation, Jeffrey Katzenberg, to help develop Pixar’s first feature film. The deal was not favourable to Pixar, but we’ll get into that another day.

Katzenberg and Disney originally had some sway over the project, but after seeing the initial story board drafts, Disney eventually gave Pixar full creative control of the project. Initially the story would have been a pseudo sequel to Tin Toy and centred around the main protagonist of that short and a ventriloquist dummy named Woody. After Pixar gained full control it eventually turned into a buddy comedy centring around a space themed action figure named Buzz Lightyear and Woody, who by this point was no longer a ventriloquist dummy but was now a talking cowboy doll with a pull string.

The writing of the film would change drastically as development continued. At one-point Lassiter was asked to screen what they had completed to the top execs at Disney animation, and they all hated it. The characters, especially Woody, were considered extremely unlikable and as a result the film was considered a complete mess. This screening was so bad that it threatened to shut production down entirely. Luckily this didn’t happen and they were allowed to continue, but the script had to be heavily rewritten lest the film be a flop.

After the script was finalized, they began casting some big names for the characters. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen would voice Woody and Buzz with the supporting cast containing Don Rickles, Wallace Shaw, Jim Varney, Annie Potts and John Ratzenberger, the latter of whom would go on to make cameo appearances in every Pixar film going forward.

So, after going through a tumultuous writing process, not to mention the difficulty of animating a feature film in CG, keep in mind it was the first time anyone had done this, Toy Story was finally released to theatres in November 1995 to great critical acclaim and box office results. I know I went on a bit on the films development but I do so to say this, we’re lucky the film turned out the way it did. Films that go through a development like this very rarely end up well, but thanks to the passions of the writers, animators and John Lassiter the films director, Toy Story managed to weather the storm and came out on the other side better than it probably could have hoped for. They say pressure makes a diamond and I guess in this case it’s true.

Jesus, I'm nearly three pages in and I haven’t talked about the film yet. I’ve spent an entire page on the films development, and that was an abridged telling. Enough waffling! Let's finally talk about Toy Story and see how it holds up.

So right off the bat we need to discuss the films animation. It is the first CG animated film after all which is its biggest claim to fame. But the thing with CG is that it ages, like a lot. Traditional hand drawn animation still looks great no matter how old it gets, assuming it was good in the first place that is. CG animation isn’t so lucky. A lot of this is because CG animation is very much dependent on current computer technology, one of the reasons it took so long to get a film like Toy Story was because the technology wasn’t there yet. As a result, a lot of early CG can look very ugly by today’s standards. Don't believe me, go and watch Tin Toy on Disney +, or YouTube if you don’t have it, and look at the baby in that short. I haven’t seen a CG baby that terrifying since Junior.

Pixar, for their part, were aware of this limitation. So when it came to their first feature film, they decided to focus on inanimate objects like toys rather than humans since a toy would already look fake in general and look the best with the technology they had at the time. As a result, the CG in Toy Story has aged a lot better than I thought it would. Granted whenever a human shows up they don’t quite look right, but the film doesn’t focus on them too much so it’s not a deal breaker. It knows it’s limitations and does its best to work around them.

I think Toy Story still looks good even today. Does it hold up to, say, Soul or any of the recent CG Disney films? Not really, but for the time it’s damn impressive. Really the only part of the film that looked bad, aside from the humans, was the dog. Everything else still looks alright. There's even an impressive amount of detail when it comes to the lighting and textures. For the first CG film it’s aged remarkably well.

One aspect I like about the animation is the environment. Granted the actual locations are fairly mundane, baring the Pizza Planet section which was always my favourite part as a kid due to how much more exciting it was. But aside from that the locations are rather unspectacular, you’ve got two different houses, a gas station, a city street, typical suburban locales basically. But what truly makes the environments shine is the scale of them. Because the film is shown from the perspective of toys, everything is made to be grander in scale. This is evidenced in the scene at the gas station where Woody is nearly run over by a truck. Now trucks are big even by human standards but from a toy perspective it’s outright monstrous. I don’t think people appreciate how different an environment can feel just by changing the scope of it and Toy Story is a good example of this.

One thing I noticed when watching Toy Story again was how different the writing felt. I should have expected this given that it was the first feature film Pixar had made, but it still caught me off guard. It's like watching the pilot to a TV show, the writers are still getting used to everything so it seems a little off compared to later episodes. That's not to say the writing is bad, quite the opposite, it’s just weird going back to it after getting used to how Pixar does things now.

This could be because of the writing credits. While the main story is credited to John Lassiter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Doctor and Joe Ranft, all founding members of the company who would go on to direct several more films, aside from Ranft who tragically passed away before he could do so, the actual script was written by Stanton as well as Alex Sokolow, Joel Cohen and Joss Whedon. The result is a Pixar film with a bit more of a cynical edge to it. Oh, it has the heart and emotional moments you would expect, but the humour is a lot darker than I remember it being and it focuses on it a lot more.

Since we’re talking about the writing I should probably talk about the plot now. The story centers around the toys of a boy named Andy. The head of the toys is Andy’s favourite, a talking cowboy doll named Woody. All of that changes when Andy gets a brand-new action figure for his birthday, Buzz Lightyear the space faring hero with more gadgets than a swiss army knife. This leads to Buzz becoming the most popular toy on the block which makes Woody jealous. Buzz for his part doesn’t seem to care, mainly because he doesn’t know he’s a toy, he thinks he is the real Buzz Lightyear.

Woody’s jealousy eventually gets the better of him, causing him to accidentally knock Buzz out the window, which leads to the two fighting at a gas station, causing the two to get lost. Their attempts to get back to Andy backfires and the two end up with Sid, Andy’s neighbour who’s the kind of kid who likes to torture small animals for fun, but since this is a kids' movie they replaced small animals for toys. So now the two have to not only find a way to get home but also try to survive whatever Sid throws at them.

What I find funny about Toy Story is that the inciting incident doesn’t happen until your half an hour into the film. Granted I consider that to be when Buzz and Woody get lost, but you could make the argument that the inciting incident is Buzz’s arrival and I wouldn’t disagree with you. But since getting lost and trying to get back home is the bulk of the narrative, I’m going to stick with them getting lost as being the inciting incident. Got me? Good.

Since the main bulk of the plot doesn’t happen until you’re a half hour into the film, you would expect the first thirty minutes to be a bit slow and plodding. Instead, Toy Story uses that time to effectively set up the characters, their relationships with each other and the stakes. See Andy is moving away in a week. This establishes a ticking clock, if the toys don’t get back in time, they become lost forever. This is established very early on so when the toys eventually wind up with Sid, the audience is already aware of the stakes.

Because Toy Story doesn’t waste any time, the pacing is excellent. The plot always moving forward only occasionally diverting for either a quick gag or for a brief character moment. And since this is essentially a buddy comedy the characters are one of the most important parts to get right.

Like most buddy comedies the film is centred on the relationship between the two main characters. The dynamic between Buzz and Woody is the cocky newcomer and the old veteran. One of the reasons they settled on the spaceman vs cowboy idea was that it hammered home that idea. The two don’t get along at first, but they obviously come together by the end of the film through their respective character arcs. Woody accepting his inadequacies and coming to terms with him not being the favourite and Buzz accepting that, while he might not be a hero, he still has an important role to play as Andy’s toy.

The film makes it clear that the toys purpose is to be played with by Andy, they are his toys after all and what is a toys purpose other than being played with. One of the reasons Woody is jealous of Buzz is because Andy would rather play with him. This idea of toys worried about being replaced is shown in the opening of the film where the other toys spy on Andy’s birthday party for fear his new toys will end up replacing them.

And you can’t blame Woody for being jealous of Buzz, he’s got a better voice box, a blinking laser, an impressive wingspan, he glows in the dark, he has karate chop action, his helmet does that woosh thing, he is a cool toy. Any toy would feel inadequate compared to that, especially when your only feature is a simple pull string. Plus, Woody is the toy who is the closest to Andy, so when he starts getting played with less it hits him pretty hard. It helps make his jealousy a lot more understandable. The first Toy Story doesn’t delve into the theme of toys being abandoned by their owner but keep this theme in mind because when we get to the sequels it’s going to be very important.

But this is primarily a comedy, and as a comedy it works very well. The two main leads work off each other very well. This is helped by the performances of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen. The two were already known as very funny actors so getting them to play the main characters was a good get for Pixar, especially given this was only their first film. It's kind of hard for me to properly talk about the acting in the film. Since I’ve been watching these films since I was only 3 years old, I’ve gotten so used to hearing these voices that I can’t think of anyone else playing these roles. It's why I’m a little peeved that Chris Evans is playing Buzz in the upcoming Lightyear movie. I like Chris Evans but he ain’t Buzz Lightyear to me and he never will be. I guess that’s a good indicator for how good Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are in this. They’ve done such a good job playing these characters I can’t imagine anyone else replacing them.

The supporting cast are very funny as well. While they don’t have arcs like Woody and Buzz, they do have distinct personalities that help add to the comedy. There's Rex a dinosaur who tries to be threatening but is too soft to come off that way, Bo-Peep who acts as Woody’s love interest, Hamm the wisecracking piggy bank who’s not afraid to say what he thinks, Slinky the dog who’s the friendliest member of the toys and then there’s Mr. Potato Head who’s the most cynical and sarcastic member of the group. Then there’s Sid who acts as a good antagonist for the film. What better antagonist for toys to go up against than a spoiled brat who likes to break them.

If you were paying attention you probably would have noticed some familiar toys in the supporting cast. While later Toy Story films would still use licensed toys for some it’s characters, they mostly keep it to a minimum. Toy Story 1, however, has several licensed toys and board games littered throughout the film. Most of this is in the background but it does help give the film a weird sense of relatability to it. I think that’s part of the reason it resonated with so many kids. It's easy to imagine your toys being alive when you see one you might own in the film.

Another reason it might have resonated with so many kids, it’s just a damn good movie. While the idea of toys coming to life had already been done before Toy Story, it did offer a unique take on the idea. It had a bit more of a cynical edge to it while still having a lot heart to go along with it. It also wasn’t afraid to get dark. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of kids got freaked out by Sid’s freaky toy abominations. I don’t remember being freaked out by them when I was a kid, I thought they were cool. Which is odd because I’m a total wuss bag that’s scared by everything.

If I'm being honest, the only thing in Toy Story that I don’t think works is the music. Not the score, that’s fine, I’m talking about the songs written by Randy Newman. Now I’m not talking about “You Got a friend in me”, that song is an endearing classic and I defy you to prove me otherwise, no I’m talking about the other two songs. Yes, there are only 3 songs in the entire movie. That's one of my problems right there, why bother writing songs for your movie in the first place if you aren’t going to have that many to begin with? This isn’t a musical. I guess they felt like they needed to have songs because it was the style at the time.

To be fair, it’s not like the songs are bad because they aren’t. Though it is Randy Newman so your mileage may vary. The problem I have is that the songs don’t really add anything. They don’t convey anything the visuals don’t and because the characters don’t sing them, yeah this is a Tarzan thing where the songs are sung by a narrator and not the characters, it doesn’t tell us much about the characters we can't already tell from everything else. You could cut out the songs and not lose anything important.

But if my only complaint are two songs that aren’t even that bad to begin with, well that should tell you how good this movie is. The animation might have aged and later Pixar movies, including its own sequels, would have more thematic weight, but for being Pixar’s first movie it holds up remarkably well. With memorable characters, strong writing and a great sense of humour, Toy Story is still a classic I can recommend to anyone young and old.

Next week we’ll be looking at the follow up to Toy Story and see if Pixar could replicate the same magic. They had already proven themselves, but could their next film hope to replicate the same success? Until next time, remember to stay safe and have fun.